nse halls on the
ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt
chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments of
all sizes, a medley of domestic subjects and of classical myths! Torn from
the walls they were specially executed to adorn, divorced from their
proper scheme of surrounding ornament, these wan dejected ghosts stare at
us like faces out of a mist. The uninitiated cannot find pleasure in them,
for they have no pretention to be called works of art; on the contrary
they form an inherent part of a conventional system of house decoration.
The classical student can of course find many points of interest in the
incidents portrayed, but all charm of local environment is absent;--it is,
in short, impossible to judge of Roman decoration from this collection of
crumbling, fading pieces of painted stucco. It would be as easy to imagine
the effect of a rose-bush in full bloom from the sight of a few withered
rose-buds, pressed until every vestige of colour had left their petals, as
to understand the significance of antique domestic art from the contents
of the Museo Nazionale.

But here, in the House of the Vettii, the public was for the first time
initiated into the mysteries of true Roman life; here it was admitted to
gaze upon the fruits of classical taste and refinement, and to contrast
them, favourably or unfavourably, with prevailing modern standards. The
Casa Nuova has been left as an object lesson, a complete museum in itself,
wherein every daily incident of Pompeian life, every domestic secret,
reveal themselves to our inquisitive eyes. Here in the roofless halls we
can be taken from entrance to dining-hall, from _atrium_ to sleeping
rooms, spying into the minutest detail of shape, size and colour, as
though we were seriously intending to rent the house for our own
habitation. The last tenant has even left his money-chest in his hall, his
pots and pans in the kitchen, and as we inspect his utensils, we wonder if
they would suit our own requirements to-day. Of portable objects of
value--plate, jewels, statuettes of precious metals and the like--belonging
to the late owner, there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli's
labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried
mansion. For it was the survivors of the stricken town, the citizens of
Pompeii themselves, who were the foremost pioneers to excavate, and they
carried off every work of art